Hackers are becoming more organised as a new pool of talent coming from eastern European countries – Russia in particular – becomes available, writes CIARA O'BRIEN

A number of attacks involving Russian hackers has hit the headlines in recent weeks. The most recent was the charging of Albert Gonzalez, a former US government informant who has already been jailed in connection with hacking cases. He is accused of stealing 130 million credit and debit card numbers. Two unnamed Russian co-conspirators were also charged in relation to the theft, said to the biggest case of identity theft seen yet.

IT security expert Andy Harbison has warned that attacks such as the one Gonzales is accused of may become increasingly frequent. “They talk about the information superhighway but it’s Dodge City and they shot the sheriff a long time ago,” he said.

“The police operate on a national level. The bad guys operate on a transnational level; they’re incredibly capable. The police are always a bit disadvantaged.”

Mr Harbison, a director and IT forensic specialist in Grant Thornton’s forensic and investigation services, said Russia has a formidable reputation in the hacking field. “Gonzales wasn’t so much of a hacker himself, he was the manager of hackers. He organised specialised teams. He was the kingpin of a group, and you are going to see more of that,” he said.

“On earlier hacks, he used Latvians, Ukrainians, Belarussians and Chinese. He was a very good recruiter of specialists.”

Ireland currently has no national strategy in place to deal with a major attack of this kind. Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan announced earlier this week he had commissioned a report on Ireland’s state of readiness to deal with cyber attacks.

A spokeswoman for the department clarified that the Minister had asked for the report but said it was still subject to tender. Bids from parties interested in helping prepare the report are being accepted until September 15th.

However, the Minister’s move may not be enough to prevent large-scale attacks affecting Irish people. “There is a limit to what one individual country acting alone can do. Countries need to start acting in concert,” said Mr Harbison.

Major attacks in recent months, such as the one that brought down Twitter in an alleged attempt to silence pro-Georgian blogger Cyxymu, have been linked to Russian hackers, although there is no evidence there is any connection to the country’s government. However, these apparently politically motivated attacks are becoming increasingly concerning.

“There is a risk that countries that have political grudges against others and may have lesser standards of ethics in governance may decide cyber warfare is a preferable means of damaging your enemies than physical warfare,” said Cian Blackwell, partner in business risk services at Grant and Thornton. “It’s certainly cheaper and easier to do without it being traced to you.”

Other attacks, such as the recent assault on Eircom’s DNS servers, appear to be commercial in motivation.

There is also the possibility that increasing security breaches will lead to the establishment of a two-tier internet, as Virtual Private Networks are used to create secure “tunnels” through the internet “fragmenting” it and causing the “formation of a parallel internet”, Mr Harbison said.